Self-Shadows Messed Up

[TKHawke]

I'm having troubles with the self shadows in oblivion. They were working just fine until I re-installed my game for a fresh start. I put everything at the same settings but the shadows casted on faces are all messed up. They have the big shadow blotches around the eyes and the mouth as well. It is very annoying and I love playing games at max detail so I'd really rather not disable the feature. :sad:

[HeyYou]

Check the setting in your Oblivion.ini, located in my games:

 

iShadowMapResolution

 

Should be at least 512, if not 1024.

 

That said, self-shadows in oblivion are borked, and rarely work as they should.

[GetOutOfBox]

In addition to what HeyYou said, set "iShadowFilter" (without quotes) in the Oblivion ini file, to 10. This will probably have a sizeable impact on performance if you have an old PC, but it's the only way to fix jagged self-shadows.

[TKHawke]

My computer is fairly new. I have an ATI HD 5850 graphics card an intel core 2 quad processor and 8GB of ram. I tried what you two suggested but it did no good. Maybe another reinstall will fix it as it seems every other install of oblivion gives me perfect working self shadows.(well atleast not blocks of shadows around mouth and eyes) :ermm:

 

found out it's the shadows becoming visible THROUGH objects/body parts. Noticed it on a shield a guard was carrying and the arm's shadow was right on the front side of his shield. Still dont know how to fix though.....

Edited May 14, 2011 by TKHawke

[Telyn]

I disabled mine and I really don't miss them. Whatever realism might have been gained by having them on was outweighed by the times they acted up. I know that's not the answer you wanted, but you might want to try without and see if you miss them or not. I wasn't that impressed with them in the first place, though.

[TKHawke]

I disabled mine and I really don't miss them. Whatever realism might have been gained by having them on was outweighed by the times they acted up. I know that's not the answer you wanted, but you might want to try without and see if you miss them or not. I wasn't that impressed with them in the first place, though.

 

I've tried without but I can't stand it. I'm one of those people that just HAS to play a game to it's max graphic capabilities. And after some testing with new installation, everything worked fine until I used WryeBash to create a bashed patch. That's what messed up my shadows. Does anyone know anything WryeBash does that could possibly affect stuff like this? I've tried taking out the bashed patch.esp but it still leaves my shadows messed up.

[HeyYou]

Bashed patch has nothing to do with it. Self shadows are broken. It is a game bug, and cannot be fixed. (unless beth does it, but, don't hold your breath on that.)

[NamenlosX]

You can try to force higher shadow filtering via the .ini file, say 10, though this may come at a cost of performance

[MotoSxorpio]

You cannot force iShadowFilter beyond 2. Setting it to "10" gets the same result as setting it to "1", oblivion just ignores the "0". There are 3 hardcoded settings for iShadowFilter "0/1/2", corresponding to "OFF/Lo/Hi".

 

Suggestion: turn off self shadowing but leave actor shadowing on. You can increase shadow depth by adjusting "iActorShadowIntMax" and/or "iActorShadowExtMax" and then adjust to taste ingame with sliders. I always thought the self-shadowing looked terrible, even at a shadowmapresolution of 2048...which can be game-endingly slow.

[GetOutOfBox]

You cannot force iShadowFilter beyond 2. Setting it to "10" gets the same result as setting it to "1", oblivion just ignores the "0". There are 3 hardcoded settings for iShadowFilter "0/1/2", corresponding to "OFF/Lo/Hi".

 

Suggestion: turn off self shadowing but leave actor shadowing on. You can increase shadow depth by adjusting "iActorShadowIntMax" and/or "iActorShadowExtMax" and then adjust to taste ingame with sliders. I always thought the self-shadowing looked terrible, even at a shadowmapresolution of 2048...which can be game-endingly slow.

 

That's what I assumed as well, but it actually does increase the shadow filtering setting. The reasoning behind this is that the iShadowFilter ini setting determines the factor at which Gaussian Blur is applied to self-shadows. A higher setting results in much more blurred edges, while a lower setting results in more sharper (though often jaggier) edges.

 

If you don't believe me, try it yourself. Enable Self-Shadowing in Oblivion, exit, change the iShadowFilter setting to 10. Self-shadow edges should be much blurrier (Sharper is preferable, but unfortunately Oblivion does not apply Anti-Aliasing to shadow edges, so reducing the amount of blur will just make the shadows jaggier). I'll attach a screenshot later, if I have time.

 

As for the OP's original problem, you can try reinstalling your video card's drivers, uninstalling Oblivion, removing the data folder, and reinstalling (plus install the correct patch).

 

Though as everyone has said, even when carefully tweaked, self-shadowing looks ugly, and it pretty buggy. Sometimes self-shadows clip with armor, shimmer, etc, so it's best to keep them disabled.